Knowing or Unknowing

It’s curious how blogging can reveal layers worth exploring. While I wrote Confidence, Takuin explored uncertainty in Are you Certain?

So we find writers who talk about the unknowing, the falling away of all knowledge and certainty. Then we find others who talk about finding the guru within, of finding all knowledge. So which is it – all knowledge or none? Both. (laughs)

There are 2 aspects to this – the field of knowledge and the evolution of the knower.

Broadly speaking, the process of growth is in steps like this: balance, disintegration, growth, integration and repeat. The disintegration step can be the one we resist, the integration is where we see the fruits.

For us to achieve first waking, part of the process is a falling away of some of what we once held as true. I must control. I know best. I am cursed. All the ideas of ‘me’ are founded in the ego concept of being a separate person. When we change from being ego to being Self, much of that old story falls away. Tom Stine has also explored this in articles like this one on Past Lives.

How this falling away takes place varies by person. Some have been stepping towards it and just dump the whole thing. Most go through some sort of transition. The shift may have happened, but they may still struggle a little with mind trying to get control again. This also depends on how dominant the mind or emotional drama has been. They are not a barrier to awakening but they can slow integration and clarity.

Once the first shift has taken place, a process begins towards a second shift, that of Oneness. I discuss this elsewhere. When we awaken to the Oneness of all, it is an awakening from the final dream, the Maya. This is the dawning of Gyan, total knowledge of what is. We find the guru is within and a certainty grows with the clarity of experience. We are the one mind.

Now certainly some become clear at earlier states and have great truth to share. But the most complete knowledge is gained once all illusions are transcended.

There is another side to the coin of knowing and not knowing – the field of knowledge.

Before awakening, we tend to want to control things or see ourselves as victim of things happening. This is because we are caught up in the field of action. As we discover in first awakening, action is a vast and unknowable field that takes care of itself. It continues with no doing on our part. We can come to know the mechanics of action – that is not complex. We can study the patterns of action and gain some predictive skill. But the exact form can never be known. Action itself is an interplay of energy far too vast to comprehend. Physics is even coming to see that every particle in the universe is connected to everything else. It’s called quantum non-locality.

Thus the play of life itself is never fully knowable. But that turns out to be a dream.

As we pull back the curtain of illusion, the deeper values of reality are revealed. Those can be fully known. And it is a knowledge much deeper and more important than the best laundry detergent. This is the home of the guru, of the flow of Self within Itself. It is the home of Veda, pure knowledge. It is knowing beyond what any books or talks can offer. It is knowing yourSelf, which is all things.